Isn't that planet also rotating? At around 1000 MPH at the equator, or maybe 500 km/h at European latitudes?

Handily, the Imperial System shows the Earth's circumference at about 24,000 miles, which nicely matches up with 24 hours. Take that, SI enthusiasts!

So in the 5 seconds it took to read that posting, we moved an additional, well, uh, the math... 3600 seconds per hour, five seconds, 500 divided by something times something is about three quarters of another km added onto that 3000...oh well never mind then...

It rained all last night so that this morning there was a queue of traffic outside the door and I realised I was probably not going to make it to the brewery just a few miles away down increasingly small country roads which cross several streams all of which are temporarily raging torrents.

Well, the Italians invented espresso, right, which is what Starbucks claims to sell. So I suppose it makes sense for the originators to try to keep control of their product, like France did with her grapevines...well, except for America saving that whole industry...so it will probably be a while until you can get a good coffee in Milan or wherever...or at least until Starbucks decides to change marketing strategy and open some stores in Italy...

Aw, come on, it only costs anything close to 5$ if you're getting the "Venti" (or XL, in normal sizing), which is easily a full day's worth of coffee.

People talk all kinds of crap about Starbucks, but the fact is that in most of the country, it brought decent coffee to the wilderness. For every place that had an actual boutique coffee shop, there were thousands where the residents have never even heard of such a thing, and where "coffee" meant freeze-dried ground shlock left to burn on a hot pad for hours.

Starbucks coffee is consistently not bad, and occasionally good. What more can you really ask for?

Yeah, they sell lots of milkshakes as well, but whatever. Not everybody likes coffee.

But your point about coffee quality is certainly true. I have a choice of about a dozen coffee shops or restaurants that serve cappuccino within a kilometer of my house, and the non-Starbucks products are universally worse and less consistent.

I don't drink coffee, so I don't much care about stabucks or all the hundred other over-priced foam outlets that festoon high streets around the world

However, what i want to know is why it is practically impossible to find a decent cup of tea anywhere, even in the UK. Near, but not actually boiling, water doesn't make decent tea. Especially when poured into a cold cup and cold milk poured straight on top of it. You used to be able to buy tea that had been sitting in a pot for half an hour or so, a bit stewed but at least it had strength and flavour. now you can only get cardboard flavoured warm brown water. And. I. Hates. They.

Proper Tea has milk in it. However none of those are remotely brown enough to count as the brewed part of the equation. They all look suspiciously like the cardboard flavoured warm brown water I originally complained about.

I believe, without undue modesty, that I have certain qualifications to write on "how to be an alien." I am an alien myself. What is more, I have been an alien all my life. Only during the first 26 years of my life was I not aware of this plain fact. I was living in my own country, a country full of aliens, and I noticed nothing particular or irregular about myself; then I came to England, and you can imagine my painful surprise.

I might have written that myself. I shall buy the book.

It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II

Well then you're not a candidate for moving to Colorado Springs after all. Because of our 2000 meter altitude, water boils at about 200F/93C. Before microwaves, everybody cooked in pressure cookers because otherwise you starve before your potatoes are soft enough to eat.

That is where I got it in the '60s, from a nice looking little green side salad at a Howard Johnson's cafe. I think Lomotil and Immodium are the store bought descendents of what the Peace Corps folks fondly referred to as 'El Tapon'. It at least made it safe for me to travel after a day, though the misery lingered for a couple more days. Fortunately I didn't suffer from motion sickness, as we were traveling to Autlan de Navarra, which was a delightful little town with a canvas covered mercado which sold fresh squeezed orange juice from local oranges for five centavos per half litre - virtually free. Across from the mercado was the bandstand in the town square. Autlan sits on the floor of a valley surrounded by mountains soaring a couple of thousand feet higher, up to around 6,000 feet, where you have cloud forest some of the time. On the western slopes there were stands of virgin walnut trees between four and five thousand feet in elevation - a good location for a walnut saw mill and veneer factory. Don't know if those stands remain. Probably do.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

I have no idea where I got it. I always assume it's the least likely candidate. I've had plenty of uncooked leafy and otherwise veggies down here with no issue, and I ate nothing of the sort for the 48 hours before I got sick.

pharmacies and doctors in Mexico will give you an antibiotic which is common there, chloamphenicol, which may cause aplastic anemia, by killing all of your blood stem cells

Drugs that cause aplastic anaemia may also be related to benzene. The antibiotic, chloramphenicol and the anti-inflammatory, phenylbutazone are two examples. Neither is commonly used in Western countries, but because they are cheap to produce, they are in widespread use in the developing world.